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Topic: Questions for Facebook Users (Read 8029 times)

I have resisted Facebook for many years. But a friend has suggested I open an account to make it easier for us to stay in touch - she currently lives about a 3 hour flight from me.

Is it possible to completely lock it down so no one sees anything? Except for the people I friend, of course. I don't want my life all over the net.

People talk about posting on your wall and about messaging and all sorts of other things that I don't understand. So I'd like to know more about it and make a decision about whether or not I'm going to continue to resist or bite the bullet and join. Of course, as soon as I do, Facebook will probably fold, with my luck.

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After cleaning out my Dad's house, I have this advice: If you haven't used it in a year, throw it out!!!!.

In the privacy settings you can choose how much people can interact with you. It is possible to set everything so that only those you are already friended with can see your FB account, and you can also set it so that nothing comes up if people search for you.

Yes but facebook changes this so often that you have to look at your privacy settings regularly to make sure everything is still as locked down as you want it. Personally I don't worry about privacy so much as I just don't post anything I wouldn't mind being published on the front page of the new york times. So yeah I don't post that much but it won't come to bite me later either.

Yes but facebook changes this so often that you have to look at your privacy settings regularly to make sure everything is still as locked down as you want it. Personally I don't worry about privacy so much as I just don't post anything I wouldn't mind being published on the front page of the new york times. So yeah I don't post that much but it won't come to bite me later either.

The bolded is what concerns me. I definitely don't want people to be able to find me. High school wasn't the best experience and I really don't have any desire to reconnect with most of those people. But I guess if they do find me, I can just ignore their friend request? Or block them? Or something?

Logged

After cleaning out my Dad's house, I have this advice: If you haven't used it in a year, throw it out!!!!.

Yes but facebook changes this so often that you have to look at your privacy settings regularly to make sure everything is still as locked down as you want it. Personally I don't worry about privacy so much as I just don't post anything I wouldn't mind being published on the front page of the new york times. So yeah I don't post that much but it won't come to bite me later either.

The bolded is what concerns me. I definitely don't want people to be able to find me. High school wasn't the best experience and I really don't have any desire to reconnect with most of those people. But I guess if they do find me, I can just ignore their friend request? Or block them? Or something?

You don't have to accept a friend request and you can block them if you want to. I have never blocked someone so I don't know how easy that is but I have just ignored friend requests.

Absolutely, there are several ways of doing it -- lock down your profile so no one sees it, or even use an alias. I have a few friends who do this. For example, one girl is named, say, Meredith Kincaid and her Facebook name is Em Kay. Just let the friends you do want to contact know the alias you're using.

There is also an option in your privacy settings so that you don't show up in the search feature by name. The only way someone would be able to find is if you gave them your email and they searched like that.

At least that's how it used to be, I'm not so sure anymore, with how much they change things.

Another thing you could do, which some of my nieces and nephews (college and post-college) have done, is to use your first and middle name, rather than first and last, as your account name. This way future employers are unlikely to find their personal pages and see their "misspent" youth, but the name is easily recognizable to allowed friends.

Something that would work is to set your age to 13. It automatically locks most of that stuff down.

LOL. That'd be one way to do it.

I like the idea of an alias so I may go that route, if I decide to bother. Or use my first initial spelled out, like Em or Kay and use my last name which is very, very common. I wouldn't want to use the spelling of my first name because it is highly unusual even though my name is reasonably common. And I don't like my middle name - I'm not sure even my closest friends know what it is.

I'm just really worried that it will become a huge time suck. I already spend far more time on EHell than I should.

Logged

After cleaning out my Dad's house, I have this advice: If you haven't used it in a year, throw it out!!!!.

Yes but facebook changes this so often that you have to look at your privacy settings regularly to make sure everything is still as locked down as you want it. Personally I don't worry about privacy so much as I just don't post anything I wouldn't mind being published on the front page of the new york times. So yeah I don't post that much but it won't come to bite me later either.

The bolded is what concerns me. I definitely don't want people to be able to find me. High school wasn't the best experience and I really don't have any desire to reconnect with most of those people. But I guess if they do find me, I can just ignore their friend request? Or block them? Or something?

You don't have to accept a friend request and you can block them if you want to. I have never blocked someone so I don't know how easy that is but I have just ignored friend requests.

Yes but facebook changes this so often that you have to look at your privacy settings regularly to make sure everything is still as locked down as you want it. Personally I don't worry about privacy so much as I just don't post anything I wouldn't mind being published on the front page of the new york times. So yeah I don't post that much but it won't come to bite me later either.

The bolded is what concerns me. I definitely don't want people to be able to find me. High school wasn't the best experience and I really don't have any desire to reconnect with most of those people. But I guess if they do find me, I can just ignore their friend request? Or block them? Or something?

You don't have to accept a friend request and you can block them if you want to. I have never blocked someone so I don't know how easy that is but I have just ignored friend requests.

I know this is not everyones experience, but I always find that Facebook defaults to more security when it changes things. My page is fairly locked down and with the recent changes Facebook also made me unsearchable, durring planning for my 20th highschool reunion It is all worked out now. I also blocked a few people, it is quick and easy to do. It is like they don't even exist on Facebook, I can't see if they post on mutual friends pages and they can't see anything of mine, lovely.

My sister and I had our fifteen minutes of fame. It wasn't good. We were blindsided by strangers looking us up on FB and sending actual hate mail to us, so we locked everything down. This was back in 2007. I haven't had a single problem since then.

I have it set so you have to be a friend of a friend to search for me, but you can set it so nobody can search for you unless they're already your friends. What's really fun is when two people have those settings, they know each other outside of FB, but don't have any mutual friends. Neither can search for the other, aside from coordinating a time where they'll both be on, one will change their settings, let the other know, the second will send off a friend request, and the first person will lock their settings back down. BTDT. It was actually kind of fun.

As to how much time you'll spend, it's up to you. I personally hate all the games on there. I've blocked all the app requests I've gotten, and keep blocking them as they come out with new ones. If you don't have very many friends on there and don't care to use that to follow their every move and instead use it as more of a chat service, it shouldn't be too much time at all. I'm usually only on FB for at most half an hour a day, and that's only five minutes here or there checking in on things. Tumblr, on the other hand, has been like eHell and sucked away hours of my day every day.

My sister and I had our fifteen minutes of fame. It wasn't good. We were blindsided by strangers looking us up on FB and sending actual hate mail to us, so we locked everything down. This was back in 2007. I haven't had a single problem since then.

That's really creepy that someone would do that...

Also, regarding games: Do you use any "apps" on Facebook? If not, you can turn off the entire app platform.